


Something something the mortifying ordeal of being known

by Zerobotic



Category: The Murderbot Diaries - Martha Wells
Genre: Gen, Post-Network Effect
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-14
Updated: 2020-10-14
Packaged: 2021-03-08 04:20:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,406
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26999578
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zerobotic/pseuds/Zerobotic
Summary: Amena notices something Murderbot wishes she hadn't.
Relationships: Amena & Murderbot (Murderbot Diaries), Asshole Research Transport & Murderbot (Murderbot Diaries)
Comments: 36
Kudos: 190





	Something something the mortifying ordeal of being known

Even though the Preservation station responder had shown up, ART was stuck until its university’s decontamination team could get here. The Preservation group was also staying until then, in case the Barish-Estranza ship decided to try something stupid. Plus, there was that whole “Murderbot sticking around and going on missions with ART and its crew” thing to figure out before anyone went back home. I had more or less decided already, thanks to my talk with Dr. Mensah, but I guess ART thought that sitting in contested territory with a fucked-up wormhole drive and a corporate supply transport nearby was a bad time to raise the topic with its crew, because it hadn’t yet. With what ART’s idea of what a discussion like that involved, that was probably for the best. We didn’t need even more stress added to the situation. (Although for all I knew, ART was slightly less of an asshole with its crew.)

I was sitting in the crew lounge, the one I had started calling the Argument Lounge (in retrospect maybe I need to stop spending time there, because it’s just inviting trouble), watching an episode of the new serial ART and I had started. It was satisfyingly unrealistic so far, and most of the characters were tolerable. Amena was the only human in the lounge, and she was sitting nearby browsing information about ART’s university in the feed. She had been staring at the same information for the last five minutes, which was unusual even with a human’s typical information processing speed. Also, I could see through one of ART’s cameras that she had glanced in my direction twice in the last minute. It wasn’t hard to guess that there was something she wanted to talk about.

When she finally spoke, her voice was loud in the quiet of the lounge. “Do you really call yourself Murderbot?”

I flinched. I know, way to give yourself away, Murderbot. In my defense, even though I’d known she was going to say something, I hadn’t expected that. The events of the last twenty plus cycles had been long and exhausting and I didn’t want to deal with this right now. Or at all. Mostly I just wanted to sink back into the entertainment feed with ART. It had paused the episode, though, and I could feel it lurking in the background, waiting for my response to Amena’s question.

(Maybe I had gotten a little bit used to the way Mensah and the other survey team members didn’t push, when there was something I didn’t want to talk about. Even the ones who got the most sentimental usually picked up on when to back off. Sometimes I didn’t even have to say anything for them to get the idea. I didn’t realize until then how great it was, and once again I wondered just what the hell ART saw in adolescent humans who never knew when to stop poking things.)

“Where did you hear that?” I said, and immediately kicked myself. I should’ve said something like “no, what the fuck,” but I’d been caught off guard. I still _really_ needed to get around to setting that one second delay on my mouth.

Amena shrugged, looking at the ground. I was glad she wasn’t looking at me; I wasn’t sure I could handle it right now even through the camera. “It was in the message Three delivered, from 2.0. When it told us you were captured.”

Fuck. I’d forgotten about 2.0 calling itself that, with everything that had happened since then. Nearly being killed and/or assimilated by a control system corrupted by alien remnants tended to make things like that seem unimportant. It didn’t feel so unimportant now, with something cold flooding my organic parts. Amena still wasn’t looking at me, and I stared at the wall. ART had sent me the video of the humans arguing about how to rescue me while they had been putting me back together, and now I split off part of my processing power to run it back. I needed to know who else had heard Three mention my name.

Aside from Amena, only Ratthi, Arada, and the injured humans Three had rescued from the Barish-Estranza explorer had been present for Three’s message. That wasn’t great, but it wasn’t as bad as it could have been. Ratthi and Arada had known already, and only three members of ART’s crew had been present. I wasn’t thrilled that some of the Barish-Estranza crew had heard, but I wouldn’t have to interact with them again so I also didn’t really care. As for ART’s crew, it was possible that that part of the message might have slipped by unnoticed in the chaos of the rest of it. Especially since they had been in need of medical attention at the time. Obviously Amena had noticed it, but she would have had more reason to remember it than they would. At least, I hoped. (Somehow it didn’t make me feel much better.)

I had been quiet for too long, and I wasn’t sure what my face was doing. Probably nothing good, because Amena was talking again, sounding nervous. “Don’t be mad at Three, it didn’t know, it was just delivering a message- “

“I’m not mad at Three.” I wasn’t. I was going to have to talk to it about saying my name around anyone else, but I wasn’t mad at it. Mostly I was mad at myself. Fuck. I should have done a better job coding 2.0 to include that directive. And I should have remembered it using our name and expected this conversation. Maybe if I’d been more prepared for it I could’ve undone some of the damage.

Unlikely, I know. From my limited interaction with adolescent humans, they didn’t drop a subject til they were satisfied with the answer they got. (They were a lot like Miki that way, and for some reason that thought made my already-falling performance reliability drop another percentage point.) It was incredibly tempting to just walk away, but I didn’t know how Amena would take that. She would probably just find me again later and ask again. She might even come to her own conclusions and decide I wasn’t safe to be around. I didn’t want that to happen. As annoying as she could be, the idea of Amena being scared of me felt almost as bad as the idea of Mensah being disappointed in me (which was something else that would happen if Amena decided she hated me). I was stuck. I had to say something.

(There was also the chance that if I didn’t, ART would take things into its own hands. It would be a gigantic fucking hypocrite for doing that after the way it lectured me about Mensah’s privacy, but it was an asshole like that. And it had a weakness for adolescent humans.)

“That name is private,” was what I decided to go with. Keep things simple, and hope that maybe she would take the hint and drop it after all. (So maybe I didn’t have high hopes, but she was Mensah’s daughter, she had to have picked up on _something_ from her, right?)

“Does second mom know?”

At least that was a question I knew how to answer. “Yes. The original Preservation survey team were the only humans who knew.” (Until now. No, I definitely wasn’t annoyed about it. This is my not-annoyed face.)

“But they don’t call you that.”

“It wasn’t my choice to tell them.” Just like it wasn’t my choice to tell anyone this time either. I really hoped this wasn’t going to become a trend. I was already getting tired of it. At this point, I was just hoping that she wouldn’t ask-

“Why do you call yourself that?”

Well, shit. Of course I couldn’t be that lucky. I could feel my jaw hinge grind as I tried to figure out, again, how much I could answer without provoking more questions. I could have just told her to fuck off, but I was still trying to avoid scaring her off too badly. I know, I can’t believe myself either.

“I’m a SecUnit. We’re made to murder things.” There. Hopefully that would satisfy her curiosity and we could move on from this.

“Thiago says you’re also made for spying on people, but you didn’t name yourself Spybot,” Amena pointed out carefully, obviously trying for a casual tone and failing. Talking to Eletra had given her practice trying to diplomatically approach touchy subjects, but she was still clumsier at it than most of the adults on the ship. Still, damnit. Fucking Thiago.

“Thiago says a lot of things,” I said, and yes, I was aware that that wasn’t an answer. From the frown Amena gave me, she was too. But she didn’t say anything else right away, instead chewing on a thumbnail as she stared thoughtfully at the ground again. (Yeah, humans are gross.)

I considered starting up an old episode of _Rise of Sanctuary Moon_ in the background, just to have a distraction from this conversation. It was excruciating. I wanted out of this room, out of this conversation, and I could feel a wave of that old _I don’t care_ lurking somewhere waiting to overwhelm me if I let it. (I didn’t want to let it. Maybe it could have made this easier, but something about the idea felt wrong.)

_I don’t understand why you think they’ll be upset,_ ART said pointedly on my private feed where Amena couldn’t hear. It had been quiet so far, but from its tone now I could tell it thought I was being an idiot. I knew it was talking about Ganaka Pit. It had been there when I found out exactly what had happened. It had been the one encouraging me to find my “crew” afterward. _It wasn’t your fault_.

I didn’t know how to respond and I was getting frustrated, so I bundled up a bunch of old memories of times I’d been shot, tortured, sent alone into near-suicidal situations, or memory purged because of the way humans feared SecUnits, and shoved that in ART’s direction.

It didn’t take long for ART to respond with another data package of its own memories from the clusterfuck we’d just been through. It included that same recording of the humans, both mine and ART’s, trying to figure out how to rescue me from hostile colonists, but it also contained a number of other short clips. Amena worrying over my leaking body after I was shot in the back by the Targets onboard and waiting in Medical for me to wake up. Ratthi smiling easily as he talked about being used to being overheard (spied on). The way the team had obviously been wary of pissing ART off but didn’t stop me from confronting it about kidnapping us. Arada’s discomfort with having to act like I was a normal SecUnit around Supervisor Leonide, and Amena’s disbelief at the way SecUnits were treated in the Corporation Rim. Thiago and Overse accompanying me to the dock and later the planet, agreeing to follow my orders. Thiago, Ratthi, and Kaede spending hours in the shuttle bay rebuilding me enough that ART could remove the contaminated code from my system, and Amena sitting by me in Medical again. Mensah standing down immediately after hearing from me, and the easy way she had sat next to me, close enough to touch but careful not to. Interspersed with the clips were fragments of ART’s crew, on their regular missions, and the way they treated it. The way they trusted it. The way it trusted them.

_They’re your crew_ , ART said simply but forcefully. I knew what it was trying to say, but just because it had been lucky with its crew didn’t mean it was right about this. Its purpose and mine were very different. People didn’t see rogue transports on the entertainment feed and wonder if ART would be the next to go on a rampage. It had never killed the humans it was meant to protect. But I was suddenly too exhausted to try and argue with it about that.

(Maybe, just a little bit, I was hoping it was right.)

_Just don’t fucking tell anyone_ , was all I ended up sending back. I’d meant for it to sound angry, but mostly I just sounded tired. I had overheard enough of ART’s conversations with Amena to know that they would gossip about this. I couldn’t stop them and honestly didn’t give a shit anymore. But I wanted to make it clear that parts of this topic were off limits. It was bad enough ART had gotten everyone kidnapped on my watch. It made sense now, and it had apologized, so whatever. If it told Amena behind my back that I was a mass murderer and it made her scared of me, I wasn’t sure I could let that go. 

I could see through the camera that Amena was glancing at me again like she was figuring out how to say something. I mentally braced myself.

“You don’t have to tell me,” she said at last. I’ll admit, that wasn’t what I was expecting to hear. “I mean, I don’t think I get it, but I guess it’s none of my business, and I shouldn’t have pried. I trust you, and I know second mom and the others do too.” This was starting to sound suspiciously like an apology I would’ve found in a search for “how to apologize,” or maybe like something she had been talking about on the feed with ART. It wasn’t like I would have been any better at it, though. And I wasn’t about to argue with it. Mostly I was just too glad she seemed to be letting it go to question anything.

“And I won’t tell anyone,” Amena added earnestly. “I get that it’s private, and I won’t use it if you don’t want me to.”

“I don’t,” I said, and realized my shoulders were hunched. I forced them back down.

Amena just nodded and smiled. “Okay. SecUnit it is, then.”

The relief I felt was intense enough that I actually made eye contact with her, just for a second, before looking away again.

I meant it; at that moment all I wanted was for her to forget she’d ever heard my name. I didn’t want to talk about it anymore. (Part of me was a little surprised she didn’t ask if I wanted a more human name; if this had been one of the serials in the entertainment feed there would’ve been a whole dramatic, emotional scene about that. My life wasn’t a serial and I would rather rip my hand off again than be human, so I was glad she hadn’t said anything like that.) But some part of me couldn’t help thinking about the few times a human _had_ used my name. Back during the escape from TranRollinHyfa, Mensah had called me by name while she was trying to save my life from a combat SecUnit intent on tearing me apart. It…hadn’t been terrible. And when I had first made contact with her to rescue her from GrayCris, she had asked for my name as the signal that she could trust me, which made my insides feel kind of melty in a way I hadn’t really had the chance to deal with at the time.

Ugh, emotions. They were confusing, and I just wanted to get back to my media, where things made sense.

I didn’t want them using my name right now. For now it was still something that I wanted to be just mine. But…maybe there was a chance ART was right. Maybe someday that could change. And it would be my choice, if that day came.

“Thank you,” was all I said out loud, because that was what a quick database search told me I was supposed to say in this kind of situation. And also because I actually was grateful to her for dropping the subject that easily. (Well, relatively easily at least.) This conversation had been stressful, and then kind of confusing, and it had given me some things to think about. As if I needed any more of those.

I thought that was going to be the end of it and started to pull my media back up. But Amena was still looking at me. “What.”

She rolled her eyes. “I really am gonna miss you, you know. When you’re gone with ART. I don’t know why, because you’re an asshole, but yeah. I am.”

Great, more emotions. I thought we were done with those for a while.

“You act like it’s already been decided.”

_Hasn’t it?_ ART said over the feed, and I aimed an obscene gesture at the ceiling. Amena snorted.

“Fine then, _if_ you leave with ART, I’ll miss you. I really was getting used to you being here. And – you know.” She shifted awkwardly, and I suddenly got the feeling that I was about to feel very awkward too. “It feels safer, with you around. I don’t know what I would’ve done if you hadn’t been here, during all of this.” Oh yeah, there was the awkwardness. 

Honestly, none of this was making me want to spend any more time around adolescents. When they weren’t taking stupid risks and arguing for no reason (actually, maybe adolescents have more in common with adult humans than I was giving them credit for) they were making things weird and emotional and awkward. That was something the other humans I was used to did, too, but the adolescent ones seemed to do it more. Absolutely no sense of when to stop poking things.

“My contract says no hugging,” I reminded her, because things were getting mushy way too fast for me and I wasn’t sure what else to do. _ART, this whole shitshow was your fault and that means emotional support is your responsibility._ Amena laughed, while ART just sent an amusement glyph across the feed. It still managed to sound like an asshole without words.

“Don’t worry, you’re safe,” Amena said. “No hugs. I just wanted you to know, before you left.”

“I’ll be back,” was all I could think to say. I don’t know why I said it, but it made Amena smile.

“I want to hear stories from your adventures with ART, when you get back. And…try to be careful? I feel like I’ve spent more time in Medical than anywhere else on this trip.” She looked up at the ceiling. “ART, bring it back home safe, okay?”

_I will try to keep it in one piece,_ ART chimed in on the feed, amusement clear in its voice. On my private channel, it said _She’s worried about you, you know_.

Right, because I did it on purpose. Getting shot to pieces was always so much fun. I was ready for ART and Amena to not be in the same place anymore; they were menaces alone, and so much worse together. “Only if you try not to run off with any more people twelve years older than you.” ART’s statement I ignored entirely.

It had the intended effect of changing the subject as Amena’s face twisted in indignation. “Hey, I wasn’t – wait, he was _how old?”_

_My teaching protocols suggest that at your age, a relationship like that is considered unwise among many contemporary cultures. Humans typically –_

Amena groaned and glared at me as ART continued, but I didn’t care to listen to the rest of it and focused on sorting through my media storage instead. I wasn’t sure what my expression was conveying, but I hoped it was something along the lines of “ha, how does it feel.”

_It’s going to be a lot quieter when Amena goes back to Preservation_ , I said to ART a minute later as I felt part of its awareness settle back in my feed. Amena had rolled her eyes a lot and made a lot of exasperated sounds before finally curling back up in her seat and returning to her reading, freed from ART’s judgment.

_Only until we take on students again_ , ART replied innocently, and resumed the episode. As if I hadn’t forgotten that stealing planets out from under corporate assholes was only its secondary purpose, behind research and teaching. Which meant more adolescent humans.

Shit.

**Author's Note:**

> I read all the books in a week, and then I read them again, and then I wrote this even though I've never written fic before. So, woohoo for trying new things! These books, and Murderbot in particular, have become very special to me very quickly, and I really hope I did the style and characters justice. 
> 
> Thanks for reading! :D


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